[Sheflug] Fwd: RE: Pg_m9: EU planned software patent legislation

[Bob Holland <bobholland [at] xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thought you might like to see this response which was received by a colleague 
today....

Regards
Bob Holland
---------------------------------

Thank you for your email.  In September 03 the European Parliament voted
on the first reading of the software patents proposal. It had been the
intention
of the European Commission and numerous European governments to adopt
a system that is similar to the American one.

The Greens had huge concerns with the Directive. Software patents favour
huge companies that can afford a well resourced legal department, this
inevitability harms small and medium-sized enterprises which create most of
the innovation in the IT field. Patents are expensive, create much
administrative work, and are granted slowly and for a long time period,
while the life cycle of software is short. Moreover, patents kill free and
open source software that is not only crucial for the EU's software
production but also good for the consumer.

The Green Group in the European Parliament was very active on this topic,
leading resistance to the Directive (see our website http://www.greens-
efa.org and click on "software patents"). Organising conferences with
leading patent experts, economists and computer programmers.

Ahead of the vote in Parliament we successfully managed to persuade
enough MEPs to substantially modify the text, of the Commission proposal in
the following ways:

. to exclude software from patentability (but only in one part of the
proposal);
. to prohibit the patenting of intellectual methods (software, teaching
methods, business methods etc); and
. to allow reverse engineering and interoperability.

Nevertheless, the draft Directive remained ambiguous and contradictory
(articles 2 & 4 contradict each other, with the preamble contradicting the
legal articles). Even with our amendments I believed it would open the gate
for software patents in the European Union. It is for this reason that,
after voting in favour of the amendments mentioned above, which helped to
avoid the worst case scenario, I voted against the adoption of this
Directive in the Parliament.

The Irish Presidency of the EU has recently referred back the controversial
Directive on software patents to a committee of politicians from member
states. The proposed draft text rejects all amendments made
by the European Parliament last September and instead pushes for direct
patentability of computer programs.

Member States are scheduled to agree a position in time for a Council of
Ministers meeting in Brussels on 17-18 May, where an agreement is due to be
signed off.

The Greens organised a day of action on the 15th of April to highlight the
worries of the open source software community ahead of the decision by
National Governments. This was a show of strength for the opposition from
both the Greens, European GNU/Linux Users Groups and associations for
the promotion of free software. The software patents directive, is on the
agenda of the Council Competitiveness on 17/18 May, and unfortunately it is
a A-item. This means that this point will be adopted without debate unless a
national government opposes it.

The issue is now in the hands of National governments and I suggest with all
urgency that you contact the UK government, specifically the DTI, and
express your concerns. At this stage the Green/Efa MEPs can only deplore the
situation with the Council which is not taking the opinion of the Parliament
into account, despite the fact that this is a codecision procedure. We will
meet again next autumn for the second reading of the directive where the
Greens will push for the Parliament to keep a clear position against
software patents - or we will vote against the directive. If you want more
information, don't hesitate to contact the Green adviser dealing with this
Lvandewalle [at] europarl.eu.int.

I can assure you that the I have done all possible to avoid this directive
and defend the highly innovative European software sector. It is now in the
hands of National governments, hopefully they will make the right choice.

Yours sincerely,
Jean Lambert
Green MEP for London





Office of Jean Lambert MEP
Suite 58, The Hop Exchange
24 Southwark Street
London, SE1 1TY
Tel: 00 44 (0)20 7407 6269
Fax: 00 44 (0)20 7234 0183
Email: jeanlambert [at] greenmeps.org.uk
Webaddress: www.jeanlambertmep.org.uk

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